Reason for reflection

As a measure of protest, thousands of high school and university students march down a street toward their city hall, waving handmade signs and shouting, “Give us libraries!” and “We want knowledge!”

You hear this description and you think, “What is this – fiction?”

This doesn’t seem a likely event to occur in the United States for a number of reasons.
For one, American students generally do not protest in the thousands. And they definitely do not protest in demand of educational resources. In fact, most American students don’t really protest at all.

This scene, however, was a reality last week in Cape Town, South Africa, where students of all ages demonstrated for improved schools and additional libraries.
Here, the most commonly voiced sentiment about educational resources is indifference at best.

It’s amazing how many times I’ve heard a college student say something to the effect of, “Ugh, I can’t stand reading.” And I always wonder, “Why are you going to college in the first place?” Then I have to remind myself, some people are just here to mate.

My high school library was known best by the students as a safe and ideal location to take a post-lunch siesta, or if you were caught roaming the halls during class time, a place to which you were perpetually en route.

After all, in America, knowledge is mostly just an alibi, a perfectly justifiable way of rationalizing why we allow people to spend so many years of their lives getting hammered and escaping responsibility before joining the work force.

So is there something to be said about thousands of children parading through the streets of Cape Town, demanding the opportunity to be better educated?

I think it’d be reasonable to say that the average American student appreciates education much less than a student in a place where the right to learn isn’t afforded to everyone.

This is the case in Cape Town, where only 15 years ago apartheid separated the races and confined black students to ill-equipped schools and universities with largely inadequate standards for education.

Equal Education, the research group that organized last week’s protests, reports that there is still enormous disparity in quality of education from institution to institution in South Africa.

The fact that these students have the capacity to assemble in such staggering numbers is no coincidence. South Africa is a country with a history of youth protest – it was 33 years ago when thousands of high school students in Soweto marched against a decree that required them to be taught in Afrikaans.

The police opened fire on the crowd, sparking a deadly conflict that left hundreds dead.
So, maybe it’s the South African people’s more recent familiarity with oppression that motivates them to eagerly express their right to assemble.

Either way, seeing images of last week’s protest made me feel a little disillusioned about American students’ lack of gratitude for their education and their absolute inability to form a collective over a shared cause.

If you want to see an example of inspiring – and humbling – student initiative, look no further than South Africa.